Reminds me of the false narrative that came out a couple of years ago about Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, etc closing numerous locations due to excessive and unprecedented theft from stores when in many cases it was a way to hide poorly performing stores due to mismanagement or bad locations from shareholders.
These stories always break out during economic downturns.
Nobody wants to come to terms with the fact that a MegaMart whose customer base is drying up because of unemployment and falling wages might be failing for a reason other than gangsters from a 90s blacksploitation crime thriller doing train robbery heists in the costume jewelry department.
The News: "Crime at an all time high, as businesses shutter their doors!"
The Crime: $50B/year in wage theft
"Oakland crime" yes, wage theft is a crime. It did occur in Oakland. Pretty straightforward really.
I haven't done the homework but this flare up on crime increase sounds like yet another excuse to be oppressive. Remember the egg shortage a little while ago? Didn't it turn out to just be price fixing?
Anyhow, I'd appreciate some good resources people have, if any, talking about this retail crime panic.
Wonder how often the old “gratuity” definition gets thrown out in these cases: Unlike a tip, automatic gratuity funds are considered restaurant funds and are not specifically designated as the property of the server by the customer.
This reminds me of a year or so ago when conservatives kept claiming "Trans sexual assaults in bathrooms were up" and it turned out that Trans people were the victims and not the perpetrators.
This is truly the most evil way of framing a headline. To make the victim the perpetrator and the perpetrator the victim.
I live in Oakland, the sharp rise in crime over the past 2 years is very real. Doesn’t excuse their lawsuit but huge numbers of businesses are being regularly broken into resulting in many closures.
We've deprived these people of resources, but I can't figure out why they keep stealing stuff. We probably need more police, more for-profit prisons, and more laws and regulations. That's always fixed it in the past.
It’s noble to work on addressing systemic inequities that lead to poverty and seeing crime as an option. At the same time, nobody who is an active criminal today is going to stop if you offer them a job at fedex.
Everyone from the Oakland NAACP to small business owners to individual victims (the majority of which are BIPOC) are calling on Oakland to get things under control. Enforcement is needed today, investment is needed for tomorrow. It’s not an either/or situation.
It’s also worth highlighting that not everyone who grows up disadvantaged turns to crime. In fact, the huge majority do not. These white guilt arguments are so pejorative and self centered.
That is also true in Portland and other cities. Methed out morons (or someone) break windows on restaurants to steal $200 or even bottles of liquor, and it costs the business $5k-10k to fix it. One establishment where I am now is closing after being broken into 7 times in the past year.
In Oakland there are lots of organized burglary and robbery gangs. It would almost be better if it was just crackheads as that feels easier to solve for in a sense, but here it’s definitely people with the sober intention to victimize others.
